Using social media in clinical practice covers a big spectrum, from attacting certain clients (marketing) to getting the message out about what you do (content distribution) to keeping up to date with what is happening in your area.  The previous post focused on how to use social media in practice to get your professional profile online, this post focuses on how to keep up to date.

Credit: www.CoxandForkum.com

Keeping up with research using social media

There are many sites which put out new research and information on a regular basis, for example ‘Neuroscience and pain science for manual physical therapists’[1], which is run by a Canadian physiotherapist Diane Jacobs, or ‘Body in Mind’[2], which is run by a clinical science research team at Neuroscience Research Australia. Other sites, such as Research Blogging[3] or Science blogs[4] do the aggregating and sifting of other sites for you and you choose the topics in which you are interested. Public Facebook pages can be read without joining Facebook and one can consider such sites as a bit like a public newspaper, only free.

If you want to tap into social media networks with your own site, work out who your site is for – clinicians, researchers, Joe public – and then tap into the relevant social networks. in this case the primary goal might be dissemination of information. Again, virtual networks eventually convert to physical networks as people communicate and spread the word. Or, as Harvard Professor Nicholas Christakis said:

‘Our experience of the world depends on the architecture of the ties around us, it depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we are residing and on all the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network.’[5].

References

[1] http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Neuroscience-and-Pain-Science-for-Manual-Physical-Therapists/114879238784
[2] http://bodyinmind.com.au
[3] http://researchblogging.org
[4] http://scienceblogs.com
[5] http://heidiallen.id.au/study-of-the-influence-of-social-networks-from-a-health-perspective/

Treating patients, keeping up with the latest research and running a business means squeezing the most out of minutes. Adding social media into the mix seems a contradiction – it might seem like chitter chatter and time-wasting.

There is also the question of mixing private use of social media with work – maybe you’re on Facebook – No Way do you want patients to find you, or know anything about your private stuff, but Yes Way, you’d like an easy way to stay up-to-date, and let people know what you do professionally. Maybe.

Photo by Mark Smiciklas, IntersectionConsulting.com

You might be thinking ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, or perhaps you keep meaning to ‘do something about that Facebook stuff’, (does anyone get Twitter anyway?), but you reflect that your world is not going to stop turning if you do not use it – it’s not like you are going to run out of patients. If you relate to any of these common reflections, then it might be worth learning more. Here is one of two posts on some of the ways that social media is being used:

Social media to facilitate your clinical practice

Let’s say you are working in clinical practice, you might sell things, and you might be wanting to attract a particular kind of client? You want what you do to stand out as something a bit different and you want potential and current patients to see your treatment is evidence-based.

First, they have to find you. More and more, people are turning to Google (or Bing, or Yahoo! perhaps) instead of picking up the phone book. Adding yourself and your practice to social media accounts means Google finds you more easily, which means clients finds you more easily.

What is a social media account? There are several common accounts. Facebook is probably the most popular.  One can have a professional Facebook page, which is not your personal page, does not include personal information (unless you want it to) and does not put you at risk of cybermisadventures with which such sites are sometimes associated.  What would you put on your Facebook page? You might want to list some of the treatments you are doing, up-to-date research, events and relevant articles you’ve read. Facebook currently has 400 million active users, 50% of whom log onto Facebook every day[1] so it is certainly worth a second glance if you are considering it.

If your desire is to link up with like-minded clinicians or researchers, or to link in to their networks, then perhaps an aptly named site called LinkedIn would help[2].  LinkedIn is another free site and is your CV online – but much more: it connects you to your peers, clients find you as they search for practices in their area and it advertises very nicely what you do, in other words your LinkedIn profile comes up in Google searches. If you don’t have a website it can be your individual site online which you can add to your email address.  LinkedIn currently has over 70 million members in over 200 countries[3].

If you do have a website then add a blog/current news section – Google will find you a lot more quickly if you do this. What do you write about? This depends on your audience – for patients you might want to write about basic exercises, good practice, take a 2 min video of an exercise and stick it on youtube as well as on your site (not hard to do, honestly).  It is pretty cool to be able to say to your patient when you hand them their exercise sheet – ‘if you forget how to do it, have a look at my site – I’ve got a section there on how to do this exercise if you forget’. How often do you need to write? The content can be anything from a couple of paragraphs a week to a book a day.

This is an example of a virtual network translating into a physical one.  Your patient has a look at your site, tells their friends, they then have a look and your reputation grows on and off-line.  The bonus is that you get to put out some quality patient information (the quality of what you post comes down to you of course, and with the huge amount of information available it is worthwhile to provide evidence that what you are writing about is credible).

Next post: Social media and keeping up with research

References

[1] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
[2] http://www.linkedin.com/
[3] http://press.linkedin.com/

This study of social networks is from Harvard Professor Nicholas Christakis, who during this TEDtalk came out with this superbness:

Our experience of the world depends on the architecture of the ties around us, it depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we are residing and on all the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network.

Human beings assemble themselves and form a kind of super organism. A super organism is a collection of individuals which show behaviours or phenomena that are not reducible to the study of individuals and must be understood by reference to and by studying the collective

Compare this ‘super organism’ to a hive of bees looking for new nesting site or flock of birds and then apply it to market crashes, adoption of innovation etc. We form social networks because the benefits of a connective life outweigh the costs such as the spread of good and valuable things

What is spread is not a behaviour, but a new ‘norm’, an idea.

About Nicholas Christakis

At Harvard, Christakis is a Professor of Medicine, Health Care Policy, and Sociology, and he directs a diverse research group investigating social networks.

His work examines the biological, psychological, sociological, and mathematical rules that govern how we form these social networks, and the rules that govern how they shape our lives. His work shows how phenomena as diverse as obesity, smoking, emotions, ideas, germs, and altruism can spread through our social ties, and how genes can partially underlie our creation of social ties to begin with. His work also sheds light on how we might take advantage of an understanding of social networks to make the world a better place.

Thanks for the hat-tip Chris and Raz.

As a Professional looking at the plethora of Social media sites available with only limited amount of time during the day where do you start?  I have tried to simplify this process with Healthcare Professionals in mind, but the principles apply in other areas. These are the steps, with examples, the main thing is – start simple.

getting started in social media

Look at some potential networks you are thinking of joining or trying out (for suggestions see Social Media Resources in Health and Medicine). Divide them into

• Professional
• Clinical
• Consumer Networks
• and information sites

Then, pick one from each.  For example:

This post is in preparation of a presentation to be given at the Noi2010 Conference on applications of Digital Strategy in Health.

There are many sites to chose from if you want to get started in Social Media.  For Health Professionals here is an updated list of available sites divided into categories. It’s impressive and updated regularly. Here’s a summary of what is included from HLWiki Canada:

• Academic science 2.0 (social networking) (20 services)
• Bookmarking and infomanagement (12 services)
• Consumer health 2.0 (social networking) (24 services)
• Medicine 2.0 (social networking) (15 services)
• Micro-blogging, -searching & -aggregation (7 services)
• Open knowledge-sharing sites (9 services)
• Personal life 2.0 & genetics tracking (13 services)
• Search 2.0 tools (11 services)
• Slide & video sharing sites (10 services)

• Medical Video sharing sites
• Podcasts and videocasts
• Applie iphones 3GS for Physicians
• Medical sites for mobiles
• Full contents list here

If you doubted the value of wiki’s have a look at the amazing amount of information contained in these links. The wiki was created in 2006 to support a health library course at the University of British Columbia.

The wiki is one part of using interactive, collaborative social software in our classes to encourage discussion with and between our students… This wiki, however, is not the exclusive domain of students taking our course. In fact, we encourage all professional health librarians to participate.

So, if you are interested in contributing your expertise to writing some of the wiki entries contact: dean.giustini@ubc.ca

This post is in preparation of a presentation to be given at the Noi2010 Conference mid-April on applications of Digital Strategy in Health.